Champions League final: Borussia Dortmund receive 250,000 ticket applications for Wembley meeting with Bayern Munich - and are expecting even more
Huge demand for tickets with 50,000 seats available for German fans
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Your support makes all the difference.Fans of German rivals Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund will have to rely on the luck of the draw to secure seats for the Champions League final after demand massively exceeded supply.
The finalists have been allocated 50,000 tickets for the final at Wembley Stadium on May 25 even though the total capacity will be 86,000.
Prices start at £60 pounds per ticket and go up to £330 for the top category, a shock for German fans used to much lower prices for Bundesliga matches.
Fans could end up paying more for a ticket for the Wembley final than they do for a season ticket at home in Germany where modern stadiums have low-cost standing areas.
Those prices have not deterred supporters desperate for a seat. Borussia Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke said the club had already received 250,000 ticket applications and expected a total of 450,000 by Sunday's deadline.
It is a similar story at Bayern who are taking applications from their estimated 187,000 members until Sunday and will then hold a lottery to distribute tickets.
Those who miss out could look online where some websites are asking up to £2,850 for top tickets.
Europa League finalists Chelsea and Benfica have been allocated less than 10,000 tickets each by European football's governing body Uefa for the showpiece occasion at the 48,000-capacity Amsterdam Arena on May 15.
The average attendance for Chelsea's home matches at Stamford Bridge this season is almost 41,500 and Benfica regularly attract more than 50,000 to the Stadium of Light in Lisbon, the venue for next season's Champions League final.
The allocation amounts to around 20 per cent per club, with some 18,000 tickets, allocated in public ballots. The rest are shared around Uefa's 53 member associations and corporate partners.
For the Champions League final, 9,000 tickets were sold to fans via the Uefa website and the remainder will again go to sponsors, broadcasters and national associations.
The city of Dortmund is planning three public viewing areas for fans who miss out on tickets for London and Berlin may re-open the fan zones they used at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups.
Reuters
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